John McNamara: Aussie Growth Built On Better Deal From Forest Owners

As if structural pine lumber producers in Australia and New Zealand didn’t have enough to worry about; now they are facing fresh competition from a species that has many singing its praises

In just a handful of years, China has charged through the furniture industry like no other country in history - seriously unnerving the traditional market leaders and flattening the smaller opposition, too slow to change course. But as Tony Neilson discovered while covering recent trade shows in South-East Asia, the emergence of another furniture giant is imminent.

Structure, unity and leadership - commodities the New Zealand wood industry has been lacking in recent times. But, as Elizabeth Howarth reports, a new initiative for a simplified structure focusing on the big issues appears to have legs.

In less than six months the face of commercial forestry in New Zealand has been changed forever by several major transactions. Most of the big pine forests are now in the hands of global investment companies, and they have different timescales for profitable returns and a seeming desire to remain detached from the industry ‘establishment’.

The chief executive of Australia’s most successful, unlisted timber company believes his contemporaries in New Zealand are 20 - 30 years behind where they should be. And for that, he points the finger at greedy forest owners.

The forests are gone; the name Fletcher Challenge Forests is history and the old leviathan is being transformed under a new name.

Ken McIntosh learned one of his most valuable lessons in a 60-year business career while sitting at steamy Nadi Airport in Fiji, waiting to catch a connecting flight to another island.

India and China loom large on the forward agenda for radiata pine exporters, but a recent government-backed trade mission to both countries was something of a ‘reality check’.